A talk given by Dr Melissa Terras as part of the University of Edinburgh's Digital Scholarship activities, February 2012. http://www.digital.hss.ed.ac.uk/?page_id=7 . Chaired by Jen Ross, University of Edinburgh, and attended by members of the Digital Futures for Cultural Heritage Education in Scotland network http://museum3.org/group/digitalfutures
Strategize a Smooth Tenant-to-tenant Migration and Copilot Takeoff
Virtual Visitors: what do we know about use of the British Museums' Collection Database Online?
1. Virtual Visitors:
What Do We Know About Use of the British
Museum’s Collection Database Online?
Dr Melissa Terras
Reader in Electronic Communication, UCL Dept of Information Studies
Co-Director, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
m.terras@ucl.ac.uk, @melissaterras
2. British Museum Collection Database Online
• Collection Database Online
– http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx
• Launched 2007
• By end of 2009: 2 million objects online,
655,395 images
• By end of 2011: 800,000 images
• Who uses these? For what purposes?
3. User studies at UCLDH
• Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and
Humanities
• User Centred Interactive Search with Digital
Libraries
• Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology
• QRator
• Linksphere (Claire Ross)
• Workplacement Student (Vera Motyckova)
• PHd Students
– BL, BM, Science Museum, Grant Museum
6. Methods
• Quantitative
– Log analysis
– Link Analysis
– Analytics
• Google Analytics
– Survey
• Qualitative
– Open ended survey tasks
– Interviews
– Focus Groups
• See “Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly
Resources”
– http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/welcome
7.
8. Some up to date context
• Jan-Dec 2011 10.5m visits / 60m pageviews to the
British Museum website overall.
• 1.2m (11%) included a visit to the Research
section, containing the Collection Online
– traffic to the section was responsible for 29% of all
pageviews (i.e. users have a higher pageview per visit
than the rest of the site).
• Compare this to 5.8m physical visits to the
museum (a rise of 4.9%)
9. Stats from Logs:18 June 2009 to 17 June 2010
– 8,761,000 visits in total
– Average 6 pages per visit
– 30% returning visitors
– 230 countries
– 923,468 visits with a search on the webpage
– 1,937,616 total searches online
• Most commonly used search terms:
– rosetta stone, egypt, mummy, elgin marbles, sutton hoo, rosetta,
parthenon, greek, coins, rembrandt, egyptian, roman, ancient egypt,
greece, ancient greece, michelangelo, china, mummies, coin, statue, bible,
portland vase, vika, goya, paintings
• Search of the COL
– 37,000 searches of the collections database
– 30,868 different searches
– Spend one minute on site after carrying out search
– 30% returning visitors
10.
11.
12.
13. Survey
• Mounted online 3 June 2010 to 2 July 2010
– Surveymonkey
• targeting every 2nd - 5th user
• total of 2,657 respondents
– completed by 1,416 respondents (53.3%)
• 30 main questions
– Multiple choice
– Likert-scale
– Open-ended questions
• Four defined tasks
15. Geographical Location
• 29% UK
– 91% England, 6% Scotland, 3% Wales.
– Most from London
• 17.6% USA
• Germany, Italy, France... Long tail....
16. Q. How did you hear about the COL?
Answer Options Response Response
Percent Count
Friend 2.50% 27
Professional environment (colleagues) 29.50% 316
Academic environment (website, academic staff, 27.30% 293
fellow student etc
School 1.00% 11
From a link on the Museum’s website 24.60% 264
Through a search engine 15.90% 170
Other (please specify) 8.40% 90
answered 1072
question
skipped 261
question
17. Other (please specify)
Journalism 4%
1%
Planning a visit Browsing
2% 1%
Personal interest
18%
Academic research
Picture research 50%
6%
School study (pupil)
3%
Non-academic
Research for school professional
teaching research
3% 12%
Which of the following best describes your reason for
using the Collection database online?
18. Role in academic research
350
300
250
Number of Responces
200
150
100
50
0
19. How do you expect to be able to search?
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
20. What are you looking for?
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
21. Type of Objects searched for on this visit
Print(s) 101 Roman; Bronze (incl. 24 Vase(s) 13
bronze age)
Drawing(s) 50 Greek 21 Statue(s) 12
Coin(s) 43 Engraving(s) 17 Medieval 11
Egyptian collection; 36 Japanese; Chinese 16 Italian; African 7
Painting(s)
Ancient 29 Ceramics 15 Islam, Islamic 6
Figure(s); images 25 Picture(s); portrait(s); 14 Rosetta stone 5
sculpture(s); etchings
22. How often do you use the Collection database online?
Everyday
3%
Weekly
This is my first 21%
time
27%
Monthly
16%
Occasionally
33%
23. Answer Strongly Agree Slightly Strongly Don't know Rating Response
Options agree disagree disagree Average Count
It is easy to find 247 408 167 31 64 2.19 917
the Collection
database online
within the
British Museum
website
The general 199 549 107 13 49 2.09 917
design and
layout of the
Collection
database online
is appropriate
The Collection 190 449 190 35 53 2.25 917
database online
is easy to
navigate
I am likely to 645 235 11 3 23 1.39 917
visit the
Collection
database online
again
It is an effective 418 375 66 13 45 1.79 917
way to search
for objects of
interest
There should 196 417 153 33 118 2.41 917
be links to
physical
location of
objects
24. What improvements would you like to see? Response Response
Percent Count
Improved search facilities 31.90% 342
More images 67.60% 725
More detailed records 37.10% 398
More objects 31.30% 336
Audio/video 4.70% 50
Other (please specify) 11.80% 127
Other: rear and 360 degree views of objects, zoomable images, simpler way to receive images (fewer steps),
being able to search by acquisition date, and making the COL search more prominent on the main homepage
25. Improvements
• Images
– More and better images, High resolution images
(especially for texts), Zoom/enlarge images, 360 view,
Basket facility for ordering images, Less steps for
retrieving images once logged on, Option to return to
search results page after ordering an image
• Objects
– Keep adding more objects, Provide greater description
of objects, provide story of item discovery, Provide
references and links to literature, journals, research
papers etc, Link items to physical location in the
museum, make it clearer where objects are physically in
the museum galleries
26. What social media applications would you like to use with
the COL?
177
97
64 59
57
39
11
Blog
Tagging
Comments
Commenting
RSS feeds
Facebook, Twitter, Delici
Discussion forum
ous, Dig etc
Links to
Over 65% said they did not wish to use social media with the COL
29. Task Based Searching 1
“You are searching for a Greek
Vase, which you know is in the
British Museum as you have
seen it in a print catalogue. It is
an Attic black-figured lekythos
from around 490BC which
depicts the myth of
"psychostasia" (the Weighing of
Souls). The print catalogue
gives the reference "B 639".
What would you type into the
search box to find the object that
you are looking for?”
30. Search term number of Search Number of Search
users outcome results
B 639 48 unsuccessful 14 (all incorrect)
psychostasia 23 unsuccessful No results matched
the
search criteria.
lekythos 9 unsuccessful No results matched
psychostasia the
search criteria.
Only 6 out of 174 users would search for “B639” or “b639” which would
yield a successful search
31. Task Based Searching II
“You are searching for a Hanging
Scroll with Mountain
Landscape, which you have
seen in the British Museum's
print catalogue. It is an ink
painting on paper from
Muromachi period, 16th century
and attributed to Zen priest-
painter Kei Shokei. The print
catalogue gives the reference
"Japanese Painting ADD 387".
What would you type into the
search box to find the object
that you are looking for?”
32. Search term number of Search Number of Search
users outcome results
Kei Shokei 38 Successful 2
ADD 387 20 unsuccessful 3 (all incorrect)
Japanese painting 13 unsuccessful No results matched
ADD 387 the search criteria.
34. Conclusions
• enhanced our understanding and awareness of
the scholarly perceptions of the BMs information
environment
• digital resources are used extensively by
academics as part of their research process and
are considered vital to their research
• Collections with a strong visual element are
particularly useful
• clear distinction between a physical and online
visit: a physical visit is a leisure activity and the
online visit is for research and informational value
35. Conclusions II
• integration of social media applications into the
Collection Online received a negative response
– a willingness to adopt new methods of content
dissemination only where “appropriate”
• Academics display specific information seeking
behaviour and sophisticated search strategies.
– seeking a known object, utilise discipline specific
search terms, show goal driven intent, detailed prior
knowledge of the museum (and academic) information
environment.
36. Conclusions III
• gives us a better understanding of search patterns
and information seeking behaviour of a specific
user group
• valuable guide for further development and
refinement of museum online collections
– Specifically, impacts design of BM collection
– Shows clear areas for improvement
– Also demonstrates that is it a well used – and liked -
resource
39. Thanks to:
Matthew Cock and David Prudames, British Museum
Claire Ross, UCLDH
Vera Motyckova, ex student, UCLDH
February 19, 1962 edition of "Our New Age“ comic book,from the personal collection
of @paleofuture: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture/.
Used with permission.